Halo 3 in MCC: Crow's Nest's two skulls

Halo 3 in MCC: Crow's Nest's two skulls Halo 3 in The Master Chief Collection. Mission spoilers. Crow's Nest puts one skull almost directly over your head at the start and the other underneath a drop that you're otherwise meant to fall straight through. The first is easy to revisit on a fresh run. The second is worth planning before you reach it. The two pickups are **Black Eye** and **Grunt Birthday Party**. There is **no campaign terminal in Crow's Nest**. **Start with the right settings** Load Crow's Nest from **Mission Start on Normal, Heroic or Legendary**. Normal is enough for these pickups. Don't select a later rally point to skip straight to the second skull; start-from-beginning is part of the collection setup. You do not need either skull active. Having Black Eye or Grunt Birthday Party available in MCC's modifier menu doesn't mean you've collected the physical object or earned its achievement. For this route, leave optional modifiers off. Neither pickup requires a grenade jump or flight. The second has a useful portable-gravity-lift alternative, but that's ordinary equipment found in the level, not a mandatory skull setting. **Black Eye: above the opening operations room** Get this before leaving the first room for the mission's combat objectives. The skull is on the large overhead pipe, not in the later aircraft hangar. 1. Walk up the short stairs toward the closed door at the far end of the opening room, then turn back into the room. 2. Find the green metal shelving or equipment rack nearby and jump onto it. 3. From the rack, look right and up for the narrower reddish metal beam. Jump onto that support. 4. Turn toward the much larger dark pipe beside it and jump up onto the pipe. 5. Carefully follow the pipe along to the skull at its end. 6. Use your pickup control to claim it, then check for **Skulltaker Halo 3: Black Eye**. The route is rack, support, big pipe. If you're repeatedly jumping straight from the floor at the pipe, you're skipping the intermediate footholds that make this simple. Take a moment to settle on each surface before the next jump. There's no need to rush a collectible sitting in the starting room, and a missed jump doesn't mean you need to invent a grenade boost. Once you've claimed the skull, get back down and carry on with the normal route. You don't have to hold it through the entire mission or enable its shield-regeneration effect to make the pickup count. **Grunt Birthday Party: the hidden passage beneath the Drone-shaft exit** This comes later, on the route toward the barracks. You'll descend into a shaft with pipe openings used by Drones. After the Cortana interruption, follow the corridor toward its next drop. **Stop at that second drop.** Don't immediately fall all the way to the lower floor. Look over the lip for the narrow shelf directly beneath the edge you're standing on. A green arrow marks the entrance to the tucked-away passage. The skull is inside that passage, not at the bottom of the main shaft. To reach it without equipment: 1. Clear anything nearby that could interrupt the attempt. 2. Approach the edge slowly and identify the shelf below before moving off. 3. Step just beyond the lip rather than jumping outward. 4. As you begin falling, move back toward the wall you stepped off. The idea is to catch the shelf underneath your starting edge, not travel across the shaft. 5. Once you're on the shelf, move into the passage and follow it to the skull. 6. Pick it up for **Skulltaker Halo 3: Grunt Birthday Party**. This is a controlled drop. Running at the opening or jumping away from the wall sends you past the shelf. If you're using a controller, the guides' usual “pull back” instruction assumes you're still facing outward from the original ledge. The important direction is toward that wall, whatever your current camera angle is. **An alternative if you don't want to catch the shelf** Before reaching this shaft, take a **portable gravity lift** from the earlier Brute/Chieftain encounter area if one is available, and keep it instead of spending it during the next fight. At the collectible drop, you can descend to the floor below, turn back toward the concealed passage and deploy the lift beneath its entrance. Ride the lift up and steer onto the shelf, then enter the passage for the skull. Don't throw the lift out into the middle of the shaft and expect it to choose the correct landing for you. Look up, locate the opening and line up the equipment beneath the place you're trying to reach. This alternative is useful only if you've actually brought the lift; it isn't something the game supplies automatically after a missed drop. If you've already fallen past the shelf without one, an earlier checkpoint may let you retry. That depends on where your last checkpoint is. A checkpoint after the drop won't move you back above it. If you've passed the opportunity and cannot return, restart the mission with the proper settings rather than relying on a late rally point to spawn the skull. **Before you move on** Keep the two pickups separate in your notes. Black Eye is the opening room's overhead climb. Grunt Birthday Party is the later shaft's under-ledge passage. Neither requires completing the campaign with that modifier enabled, and neither is a terminal. Once both are registered, return to the ordinary barracks-and-bomb objectives. There is no reason to spend the evacuation searching for an additional lore terminal that isn't in this level.